Pest control team can’t beat rat pack

Yvette Morrison with daughters Amelia and Millie in their rat-infested home.

Yvette Morrison lives in Cowdenhill Road where she and her neighbour Sharlene Sorley have some unwanted guests.

Ms Morrison told the Journal and Gazette that she moved into the ground floor property with her two children last autumn and shortly afterwards had to call on the council for help.

The bin bags in her kitchen had been ripped apart - and it was not the family dog, but the rats who live in the building. Since then she has had to call the pest control out weekly and they put down poison - but the rats eat it all up.

Yvette said that the environmental health officer who came to help told her the building has had problems with rats for over twenty years.

She said: “They are really determined. The council filled up the holes where the rats were getting in and they have just eaten their way through again. I hear them chewing and scratching when I get up during the night to fix a bottle for my baby.”

Yvette claimed her health visitor suggested her children’s health is suffering. She also said pest control officers think the problem is now under the building and they would need cameras to investigate further. She continued: “I have asked to be moved as a way out of this. I don’t leave anything at all in the kitchen overnight.”

Sharlene Sorley lives next door and has the same problem.

She said: “The council will not deal with this problem seriously. We all live with rats coming and going as they please. I’m scared to go into my own kitchen at night in case I bump into one!” She admits the problem is not as serious as that of her neighbour but she has forked out for her own rat poison.

Falkirk Council said: “Pest control officers are working to eradicate the problem and working out a course of action to prevent future infestation.”

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